Dumb Little Man

I subscribe to Dumb Little Man and it often has some great and thoughtful articles.  Since In Just 10 is about listening, the entry from Dumb Little Man is spot on.

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/11/ten-ways-to-improve-your-listening.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DumbLittleMan+%28Dumb+Little+Man+-+tips+for+life%29

Redirection

This has been a very pensive couple of weeks for me.  Finding the time to write has been difficult.  I've also been concerned about my lack of focus.  I realize that I do a lot of wheel spinning but often fail to get any where. 

I've developed a simple plan.  I'm going to get back to my original Just 10 idea and keep my writing short and sweet in this blog.  That doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing but I may stop giving so much away for free and focus on actually writing that book I keep threatening to write.

With so many things in my life and my family's life up in the air, I feel the need to anchor myself.

I will continue writing but focus on quick and simple ways to put the Just 10 idea into practice.  I'll share some links to the occasion blog or a web site that inspires me.

Thanks for reading.  Now, stop spending so much time at your computer and get out there and enjoy life!

Just Shoot Me Now

(This photo shows Maria Callas playing the part of Medea.)

Some days I don't want to take Just 10 for myself or any one else.  It can get in the way of my denial.  The veil of optimism that I force myself to wear slipped this morning.    Depending on others for shelter is not an easy thing to do especially with two children and a husband who are also suffering the pangs of loss.    We spent the weekend at moms.  She was an excellent and gracious host.    Unfortunately, we got a small taste of what looms in our future.  My mantra became:  “Just shoot me now.”

To accept dependence with grace and dignity is a very tall order.  I am humbled before the task.  Life is not for the faint of heart.  The life I have is not the life I wanted or thought I wanted.  This is not a chapter I would have written for myself.  If I wrote it for another I would make sure it had a happy ending.  From where I stand now happy endings would seem to require an act of God. 

For some reason, as I write these words I remember the ancient Greek Play, Medea by Euripides.  It tells the tale of a woman scorned.  Married to Jason, Medea reacts violently to the news of his betrayal.  She kills her two sons.  At the end of the play, she prevents Jason from holding the bodies of his sons by suddenly appearing in a flying chariot (deus ex machina) that whisks them away and out of his grasp.  In the end of Medea, the chorus says, 

"Manifold are thy shapings, Providence!
Many a hopeless matter gods arrange.
What we expected never came to pass,
What we did not expect the gods brought to bear;
So have things gone, this whole experience through!"

When I re-read these lines, I could see why the current situation echoes Medea somewhere deep and dark in my psyche.  When I first read Medea, I was introduced to the “deus ex machina.”  This is a literary term that refers to the sudden appearance of an unlikely thing, person or event that solves a problem that looked impossible to solve.

Wikipedia  (It not as cheesy a reference as you might think) defines it as:

[from the] Latin: "god out of the machine"; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.


If it worked for Medea, might it work for me?  I seriously doubt it.  God doesn’t seem to really work that way.  Years later a dude named  Samuel Coleridge developed a term,  “the suspension of disbelief” that readers or audiences need to utilize in order to lose themselves within literary works that display plots or plot devices that have little basis in reality.  Bet you didn’t know you were going to get an English lesson today.

“The temporary acceptance as believable of events or characters that would ordinarily be seen as incredible. This is usually to allow an audience to appreciate works of literature or drama that are exploring unusual ideas.”  (Thanks to this web site for this succinct definition.http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/suspension-of-disbelief.html

Both devices fail me now.  I am left alone with the stark unpleasantness of our current situation.  I cower before it.  Hope does not spring eternal.  I struggle to resurrect it.  May be another day or another time.  No deus ex machina here.

I am not Medea.  I can not sacrifice my children for revenge.  It would be a waste of time to nurse feelings of betrayal.  And yet, there is a part of me that feels betrayed.  My life isn’t supposed to play out like this.  This is worse than I expected.  No chariot appears to whisk me away.  My disbelief defies suspension.

In the background, one of the Star Trek movies plays on TV.  Star Trek story lines are wonderful examples of the suspension of disbelief and of the deus ex machina.  I still find most of the stories delightfully compelling.  It’s always been a way to avoid reality.  When I was thirteen, there was a moment when I was sure that when I grew up I could get a job as a communications officer on the starship Enterprise.  Reality has a sharp and cruel bite. 

In the world of Star Trek, characters display an exotic mixture of weakness and strengths. They demonstrate what it means to be human and humane.  They pose the possibility of a brighter future.  They show an earth and many planets combined in a federation of unity. Still, they are not free from hardship, battles or enemies.  The fate of the universe sometimes hangs in the balance.   They muddle through the timeless battle of good against evil, of man against himself, of man against nature.  They deal with fantastical powers and situations.  They expose characters who are totally involved in life. 

I envy these characters their fiction.   I look at my life and shudder as I try not to escape it.  My soul wants a holiday.  I don’t want to feel this sadness.  Concern for my children results in my having less patience with them.  The irony is not lost on me.  I want to dull my senses to the pain they feel.  

At first, I try and use these words to escape.    They aren’t having any of it.  Instead they make the problems clearer. “What would a hero do?”  I argue with this idea.  I don’t want to be a hero.  I want someone in fiction to do it for me.  

“Beam me up, Scotty!  This planet is hostile.”

Figment of My Imagination

Ah, the life of a lowly staff assistant.  Today, I started to wonder if I'm really a figment of my own imagination.  Increasingly, I feel invisible.  People seem to look right through me.  I've spent almost an entire school year at my job and only a few people actually know my name.    I greet them warmly and try and learn their names.  I even make sure to say hi to the janitor.  This is a person I prefer to have in my corner.  You never know when such a connection may prove valuable.   Unfortunately, learning the names of their employees, seeing them and greeting them isn't a skill that comes easily to those on the top of the local food chain.

They do have a lot on their plate.  Between students, parents and staff they are pulled in a lot of different directions.  Working with a class of employee that is invisible may be a coping strategy.  How can they know that I'm not that different from them?   It's easier to make hard decisions that affect employment, housing, food on our table when you don't see the people you're impacting.

A gaggle of English teachers hold private court.  They look at my entrance into the room as an intrusion.   They can't know that I have as many or more credit hours in English as they do.  Their circle isn't as elite as they seem to think. Their education is not a protection against poverty.  Circumstances, fate, bad luck, bad choices aren't magically kept at bay.  Education isn't the garlic against the vampires of life.  Wait! Those are figments of my imagination as well.

Today, I wanted to find out what hours we will be paid for on two upcoming late-start days.  We've been told that on the last two days of school we will be paid for 2 of the 3 hours the students will be there.  We are to  adjust our schedules accordingly.  Since other staff don't know what is expected of the two late start days, I had the audacity to ask.

Me:  "J.  Do you know what hours we're expected to work on the late start days next week?"
J: (If looks could kill, I'd be dead.) "Is your student here then?  If so, then you'll be here."\\
She turned her back to me.  I should have walked away.
Me:  "I'm sorry but I don't really understand."
J: (With another deadly look.) "Doesn't your student need you?"
Me:  "He doesn't require constant supervision and he is capable of taking a test on his own."
J." Well, I don't know then.  I think you're supposed to be here."
I was starting to feel a hole burning through my solar plexus.  The invisible death rays from her eyeballs were beginning to take a toll.  I didn't have an answer and now I was beginning to have a hole in my psyche. I felt small and very insignificant.

I never got a chance to express my real question, "How many hours can I count on being paid for on those   days?"   I was embarrassed to ask it that directly.  I didn't want to betray how desperate things are.  I didn't want to have be concerned with a pay for an hour or two.  I didn't want it to equal how much gas I can buy and how many miles it will take me.   I'm not trying to be a slacker but I don't want to work for free especially when I'm already invisible.  It doesn't give me anything to deposit in the invisible bank.  Wait, I'm not invisible.  I really don't exist.
  
When the classified staff kept finding the staff lounge used for other activities, it was suggested that I contact the person responsible for scheduling and let him know that it was affecting staff members.    I've never gotten a response.  I expected as much but I'm still disappointed.  Maybe I really don't exist?  Maybe my body is trapped in a coma prison or maybe I seem brain dead and my mind has created this life for me to keep me occupied while people argue over whether or not to pull the plug?

At lunch today, I sat with a woman my age.  Her face is lined with exhaustion and resignation.  She works closely with a child that is very limited.  Day after day, she cares for this child.  The teacher she has worked with all year does not believe in addressing her by her name.  She is reduced to the word: staff or aide.  I smiled and told her, "How do you like being called the "n" word?"  We laughed only slightly.  This hits too close to home. Being invisible or not existing is preferable to this.

 Kindness costs so little but could yield so much.   Even if you don't feel it, act kind any way.  Life will become a lot easier.  Smile.  Notice the garbage man, the senior citizen greeting you at Wal-mart or wiping trays in some fast food joint dressed in a ridiculous uniform.  You never know if some day you'll disappear and a simple act of acknowledgment or kindness will bring you back to life.

Call me a glutton for punishment.

No, I'm not referring to the song, "Both Sides Now".   Sister Ruth had the 8th grade class learn and sing it.   It's not a bad memory.    What I am referring to my desire to learn more about my economic class through reading.  The library contained a book by David K. Shipley called The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Once spotted, I had to check it out and bring it home.  It's not the cheeriest of reads.  It is, however, strikingly informative.  I've been wallowing in some pretty grim statistics. 

As fate would have it, as I've been reading Shipley's book, I also read a New York Times article about a new book by Martin Seligman called Flourish.  Seligman is considered a founder of the positive psychology movement.  He came up with the term s"learned helplessness" to describe the conditioned response to arbitrary or inconsistent punishment and reward.  Shipley has noted this phenomenon among the poor.  I've had personal experience with it. 

 So how can a person, living below the federal poverty level, looking forward to learning how to live within a small trailer upon losing their home, without a lot of job prospects due to age, training and economy, how can that "person" flourish?  Flourishing seems a pretty ambitious goal.  At the very least, how do I look at the bright side in a situation that doesn't offer up a light side very readily?

Seligman, has formulated a set of five crucial elements of well being.

1.) positive emotion
2.) engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task)
3.) positive relationships
4.) purpose and meaning
5.) accomplishment

Seligman says, "Well-being is a combination of feeling good, as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishments."
Now, if I identify money as THE accomplishment, I'm in a heap of trouble.  If, instead, I use a positive viewpoint to define accomplishment more broadly, then I've got something to work with.

Seligman's ideas slap up against Shipley's book once again.  Flourishing for the poor would not seem an easy task.  It might even seem an impossible one.  Human beings rarely fit neatly into any theory or definition.  Working class individuals living below the federal poverty level aren't easily sorted into myths or anti-myths regarding how they got there.  The reasons are often varied and can't be attributed to just bad choices or outside circumstances.  In most cases, it's an elaborate interplay between self-inflicted and unjust systems and biases that continue to perpetuate "the of cycle poverty". (I'm sure I've read or heard of this some where but I've been referring to the set of circumstances and psychological profiles that combine to keep the poor "spinning their wheels" in the muck and mire of inadequate income as the cycle of poverty long before I rejoined the ranks of the poor.)

Seligman surprises me when he notes that people for whom good fortune comes too easily also experience "learned helplessness".  So both the poor and those with "too much good luck" experience the same feeling.  Apparently, it's not about the achievement.  It's about the path one takes to get there.

It is safe to assume that people hovering near or below the poverty level aren't racing out to pick up a copy of Seligman's Flourish.  Probably even fewer are reading Shipley's The Working Poor.  Who wants to rub their nose in their own misery?    Are the ideas and information provided by these two different books without merit?  What can be learned here?

Just suppose that as a society, we shift our focus.  We alter our definition of success.  We learn to value the things that are non-material, not financial.  Instead of the big house, new cars in the driveway and great vacations away from high powered jobs, we define accomplishment by the amount of personal satisfaction the things we do give us.  We value the quality of our relationships and not the quantity.  What if we define our worth, not by what jobs we have or what measurable achievements we've made but by who we are and how much enjoyment we find in life through the expression of our unique strengths and spirit?

If both rich and poor alike can experience "learned helplessness" the financial piece seems irrelevant.  As much as I'd like this "revelation" to take me to the bank with a huge deposit, I can't kid myself.  Being poor in America isn't the same as being poor in a third world country.  In some ways, it's worse.  Our dominant culture is awash with advertisements preaching to us about what we must have or buy in order to make our lives better.  We labor under the American Dream trying to achieve it when in reality few ever do.  It's very existence can make us feel like failures and hopelessly inadequate.  It's time to try another way.  It's time to redefine success and what it means to be satisfied in life.  Once the poor and the wealthy work together to dissolve the arbitrary and imaginary walls that separate us, we can devote ourselves to the advancement of all people and walk confidently into a brighter future.  One can dream can't they?

Ten Minutes

"Mom, Can we have our 10 minutes now?" A small voice asks from behind the driver's seat. 
I sigh quietly and turn off the radio.  I don't like having Just 10 minutes while I drive.  I can't give complete attention but some days are busy and a Just 10 while driving is the best I can do.

"What do you want to talk about?" he says. 
He often begins this way.  It's become part of the ritual. 
I reply with my standard response, "I don't know what do you want to talk about.  After all it's your dime."  I always say this. 

Beside me in the passenger seat my husband snores quietly.  Behind me and to my right, my daughter's head rests against the window.  She is also asleep.  It's just my son and I who are awake.

My son asks, "How was your Saturday?"  He'd spent the day with dad while daughter and I spent the day and night at Grandma's.    I provide a quick and simple summary.  "We stopped in Salem and got your present." 
I know he'll be especially eager to know we did this.  His birthday is tomorrow.
"We ate lunch, drove to Grandmas, went into Stayton and checked out the library and stopped at the Dollar Tree to buy wrapping paper and a card.  What did you and Dad do?"
The ball is back in his court, where it should be.  He provides me an equally concise summary of their day.  He is just picking up momentum and begins bouncing from topic to topic.  I listen with one ear only.  I note how automatic my driving is becoming and promise to pay better attention to son and to road.

The boy in the back seat suddenly asks, "Are you tired, Mom?" 
"Yes," I say.  "I'm really tired."
I think back over the busy weekend, how much work and upheaval we created.  We'll be moving down to my mothers for the summer months, maybe longer.  This last weekend, we began the transition.  The magnitude of this move feels overwhelming.  I can't wrap myself around it.  I swing from being hopeful to feeling crushed.  This swinging is exhausting.  How can I prepare myself, let alone my family for this challenge?  There is no guidebook.  The fall from middle class into poverty has been both slow and abrupt.  The farther we fall, the harder it is to climb back up.


"Mom," says the voice in the back seat.  "Sometimes, I hear someone call my name but no one is there." 
This I know well.  I spent my childhood being called.  I'd sometimes convince myself it was God and remember the story of how God called Samuel in a whisper and how Samuel was advised to respond.  As an adult, there are still times when I hear my name being called.  Since sane people don't hear voices, I tell myself it's my imagination.  At least, that's what I chose to believe.  I am not Samuel.  I tell myself that the voice comes from within that it's calling me, my better self forth. 
I tell my son none of this and say, "Yes, I know what you mean.  I heard my name called when I was a kid.  Maybe, it's our way of letting ourselves know that we need to pay attention to who we are."
"Oh," he says. 
Moments of silence follow.  I turn my attention to the road in front of me.

"Are we in Salem yet?"
"No, honey.  We passed Salem about 1/2 hour ago.
"Oh," he says.
"Mom.  What is the weirdest thing you've ever seen with your own eyes?"
I have to give this some thought. 

"Oh," I say.  "This is really weird and it was probably just my imagination but this has always stuck in mind." 
I know this has captured his interest.
"Tell me," he says.
"Well, " I say.  "When I was still little and we lived on the farm, David and I were playing Church in the dining room."
He laughs.  "Why were you playing Church?"
He finds this very amusing.
"Think about it a minute," I say.  It makes sense.  We went to Church.  Everybody we knew went to Church.  We went to Catholic school."
"Yes," he says.  St. Bony Face." 
He laughs again recently having discovered that B-O-N-I-F-A-C-E could be given a different pronunciation.
"Well," I continue trying to reel him back in.  "The mass is high drama.  It begs to be reenacted."
"Oh," he says.  "I see".
I know he doesn't really get it at all but wants me to continue the story.

"We were playing and I looked up and saw this misty, smoky shape in the center of the room.  It didn't look like a person or anything but it was there hovering in the center just like mist or smoke does.When I went to get my mom, your grandma and came back into the room, it was gone."
"Cool!  Do you think it was a ghost?"
"Hmm, maybe.  I think it was probably just my imagination.  I've never forgotten it.  It seemed pretty weird at the time and a little weird still.
I quickly ask him, "What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen with your own eyes."
"I haven't seen anything weird yet.  I'm still waiting."

We continue the drive in silence.  I am lost in my thoughts.  I feel anxious about the unknowns that lie ahead.  The thought of the work involved feels exhausting.  I am overwhelmed.  I slow the van slightly before entering the curves as we drive into Portland. 
From the back seat, my son says, "I don't like these curves.  They make me nervous."
"Yes, I know.  I feel the same way, " I say.
I lean into the curve and the van moves deftly within its lane.  I keep pace with the other traffic, the weather, the road as it lays itself out across the landscape. 
"Lean into the curves and close your eyes," I say.
"Ok," I hear from the back seat.
We flow homeward, smoothly and with a gentle, graceful rhythm that I hadn't felt before.
I think of all the minutes past and the minutes ahead and realize they can only be lived one moment at a time.  All the worry, all the anxiety is often just fear of the unknown, of one's self, of life.
"Lean into the curves," I say to myself. 
"Lean into the curves."

In the Belly of the Beast

This entry is a lot darker than some.  It may also be a lot harder to understand.  I'm not sure I really understand it completely.  It demanded to be written.  Things are not always upbeat and positive for me.  I have days when I struggle with my inner demons. This last week was a very difficult one for many of us in my family.  My husband and I got into a nasty argument.  I lost my temper with my son and screamed at him.  I was very ashamed of myself and wondered how I dare write about listening to my family members and children when I could act so badly.  I had to force myself to sit down with these unwelcome feelings and make peace with them.  This entry is the story of that struggle.

Some emotions are so raw that you can't swallow them.  Instead they swallow you.  Last night I sat in their belly.  It's a frightening place to be.  I want to walk confidently into each  tomorrow but some times I fall overboard.  I struggle against feelings that I hate.  The more I struggle the harder my life can be.

In my mind I have a standard, an ideal that I reach for.  Some days I do a good job.  There are other days when I am swallowed whole.  Darkness envelopes me with a savage swallow.  I try and count my enemy's bones. "1-2-3. . ." I lose count and begin again, "1-2-3-4" and forget.  "1-2-3-4-5."  My heart spins and falls, gracefully spiraling down the darkness.  Could there be a raw and savage beauty here?   I sense it but can not see it.

Exhausted, I don't want to fight any longer.  I collapse into a pool of acid and half-digested chunks of life.  My cries echo against the belly's walls.  They shout tales of loneliness, abandon. They spew curses at fate and fortune.  They shake their fists at God and demand to know why.  Only silence answers.  It points the blame at me with a stone-like silence.  I rise to bash my soul against it.  Finally, broken and defeated, pieces of me lie at my feet like shards of broken glass.  This can not be mended.  There are too many pieces.

I fall into a dreamless sleep and awaken in the dark.  I begin the work of cleaning up the broken pieces. There really is nothing else to be done.  I remember a quote long forgotten, "Broken again and again upon the sea, the moon mends so easily."

The words spill into the wound left by last night's pain.  It cleanses.  It purifies.  It forgives, if but just a little.

I am accused and accuser, judge and jury, angel and demon.  Today becomes an atonement for all the days before.  On the altar of life I am the sacrifice.  I raise all that I am and let go.  Broken pieces fall to earth.  The Light and the Darkness dance in worship.  I drink in all that is holy and damned and offer it back again.